I've just noticed that from the 9600XT onward (except hd3200) my upgrades have roughly doubled in vram and gpu power. I've been building my own "gaming" rigs since late '03. I've been working on PCs longer, but they were just avg joe PCs. the opti and before were all in '03. played with spare "thrown out" parts from school lol. the rest are from early '04 till now. so 7 in 7yrs (close enough anyway), hah i guess once a year then! the hd3200 and i810 don't really count since i already had them or they were just temps.

Those nvidia FX cards were awfull cant belive i actually replaced my ti4600 with one.
The frame rate loss! thats before i started investigating hardware lol i just thought newer was better DOH! The titanuim range were gamers cards, The FX range where more multimedia.

My 8800 GTX lasted over 3 1/2 years before upgrading. After a couple years I hung an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 8800 and OC'd the heck out of it. Did a pretty good job keeping up...and it should given the $550 I paid for it back when.

When I come across a game which I cannot play at maximum settings. HD4870 (couldn't play Cryostasis) > HD4870x2 2 RMA's and got my money back > GTX 285 (couldn't max out Stalker Call of Pripyat) > GTX 480. All that from August 2008.

When it's dirt cheap to do so. Upgraded from an EVGA 9800GTX+ to a PNY XLR8 GTX460 1GB for $135 after MIR, Free S&H, no Tax, and discounts from JR.com. I'm from CA, so no sales tax is DOPE! Btw, that EVGA OC'ed like nobody's business.

I'm always one step behind in the game (GTX500s now? Wuuuhhhh?)

Edit: I failed to mention that I had a XFX 8600GTS in 2006-07, and the 9800GTX+ from '07 until this past November.